Skip to main content

Funny German Words

Albany, CA - In our time living abroad in Switzerland, I learned a very little amount of German. German is a confusing and wonderful language and I'll take you on a brief journey of the things I learned.

Compound Words

German is famous for its compound words, of which there are many. In fact, once you know a decent amount of root words, you can sometimes figure out the meaning of new words just by breaking the word apart into its various components. 

For example:

  • dafur: da (there) fur (for) - therefore
  • Zahnfleisch: Zahn (tooth) fleisch (meat) - gums
  • Zahnarzt: Zahn (tooh) arzt (doctor) - Dentist
  • The Zeugs: there are a number of these...
    • flugzeug: flug (flight) zeug (thing) - airplane
    • fahrzeug - fahr (drive) zeug (thing) - vehicle
    • feuerzeug - feuer (fire) zeug (thing) - lighter 
    • Spielzeug - spiel (play) zeug (thing) - toy

Tongue Twisters

German is famous for its long and hard-to-pronounce words. Here are a few I encountered. 

  • Geschwindigskeit - speed
  • verpfliptichgung - obligation
  • Selbstverstandlich - Of course
  • Sehenswürdigkeiten - Tourist attraction
  • Backpfeifengesicht - Someone deserving a face slap
This clip of Christoph Waltz on Jimmy Fallon provides some other humorous examples.

Genders

Like many Indo-European languages, the German language has three different types of nouns (genders): masculine, feminine, and neuter. At some point in the distant past, genders may have served a clear and useful purpose - I've read in the past genders were used to separate animate and inanimate things - but today their primary purpose seems to be to frustrate the language learner and to give grammar snobs one more way to look down on the rest of us. 

I could write at length about my frustrating experience with German's genders - the numerous times I failed a Duolingo lesson only because I forgot that a cupboard is masculine, for example - but I'm unlikely to outdo Mark Twain, so instead I will share with you a small segment from A Tramp Abroad, in which he describes some of his experience learning German:


Every noun has a gender, and there is no sense or system in the distribution; so the gender of each must be learned separately and by heart. There is no other way. To do this one has to have a memory like a memorandum-book. In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has. Think what overwrought reverence that shows for the turnip, and what callous disrespect for the girl. See how it looks in print--I translate this from a conversation in one of the best of the German Sunday-school books:

"Gretchen: Wilhelm, where is the turnip?

Wilhelm: She has gone to the kitchen.

Gretchen: Where is the accomplished and beautiful English maiden?

Wilhelm: It has gone to the opera."

If you're interested in reading Twain's entire diatribe in full, it's here.

Separable Verbs

Separable verbs were another frustrating feature of German. Essentially, they allow a perfectly good verb to be broken into two bits: One piece goes in its normal grammatical place and the other gets stuck on the back of a sentence for no discernable reason. This can happen when the verb is a compound word and where the root words are a preposition and another verb. For example, "aussehen" means 'look'. It's a compound verb that combines the root words "aus" (out) and "sehen" (see). 

This is an example of aussehen being separated:

strassen sehen mit Häuser besser aus (streets look better with houses)

"Ankommen" is a compound verb meaning 'arrive'. It combines the root words "an" (on/at) and "kommen" (come). This is an example of ankommen being separated:

sie kommen bald an (they arrive soon)

Context

As with many languages, the meaning of words can change dramatically depending on the context in which they are used. "Sie" for example, could mean: 'you' (formal form), 'they', 'she', or 'her'. "Ihr" could mean: 'y'all' (plural you), 'her', or 'your'.

Sometimes, the shifting meaning of the words seemed to explain a lot about German culture. For example, bestimmung means regulation, but also (sort of) destiny.

Idioms and Strange Phrases

German - like many languages - is full of idioms and strange phrases that make little or no sense to non-German speakers. Here are some examples:
  • Nein, mir ist nicht danach - Literally: No, for me it is not according. Meaning: I don't feel like it
  • Es tut mir leid - Literally: It does for me unfortunate. Meaning: Sorry
  • Leben ist kein Ponyhof - Literally: Life is not a pony farm. Meaning: Life isn't easy
  • Kummerspeck - Literally: Grief Bacon. Meaning: Excess weight put on by emotional overeating
  • Jetzt haben wir den Salat - Literally: Now we have the salad. Meaning: Now everything is a mess
  • Du gehst mir auf den Keks - Literally: You are walking on my cookie. Meaning: You're annoying me.
  • Leben wie Gott in Frankreich - Literally: Live like god in France. Meaning: Live in luxury.
  • Luftschloss - Literally: Air castle. Meaning: An idea that's unlikely to come true
  • Klappe zu, Affe tot - Literally: Close the lid, the monkey is dead. Meaning: It's the end.
  • Treppenwitz - Literally: Staircase joke. Meaning: A witty joke or retort that only occurs to you once the moment has past (you're on the stairs leaving).
  • Schattenparker - Literally: shadow parker. Meaning: an insult for men who are seen to be engaging in unmanly behavior; for example looking for shaded parking.
  • Jetzt geht’s um die Wurst - Literally: Now it goes around the sausage. Meaning: All or nothing
  • Ich versteh nur Bahnhof - Literally: I understand only train station. Meaning: I don't know what you're talking about.
Some other examples are here and here.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

We're Back!

Paris, France - We've returned to Europe for a three-week sojourn in France, Switzerland, and the UK. We're obviously very excited. We arrived in Paris Sunday around 11AM. Our approach to jet lag is akin to tearing the bandaid off quickly: We purposely sleep little if at all on our transatlantic flight (below is a photo of Hannah, trying not to sleep on the flight), consume copious amounts of caffeine after we land, slowly descend into irritability and mild delirium, and then collapse after staying up as late as we can on our first night in Europe. Our body's, overcome by shock from this maltreatment, eagerly accept a full night's sleep, even if it's offered at an hour that's entirely out of keeping with our normal schedule. Works like a charm.  After depositing our things at the hotel, we aimlessly wandered around Paris for a few hours before meeting up with Maggie, an acquaintance of Hannah's from work. Maggie took us to the wine bar Delicatessen where we ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Fording the Fjords

We stayed one night in  Ålesund and for a few days in  Øye. These cities are fun for me at least partly because they use letters unique to the Danish-Norwegian alphabet, the 'a' with the circle on top and 'o' with the line through it (official letter names pending further review). Ålesund  is a port town of about 70,000 on the western side of Norway on the Atlantic coast.  We landed there  around 1100PM, but it looked more like 700 or 800pm, owing to the latitude (about 62 degrees north). Throughout our stay here, I've been very excited about the (nearly) never-ending daylight. The sun sets at about 1130PM rises about four hours later, but the hours between are marked more by a duskiness rather than a true darkness. We only stayed in  Ålesund overnight (if you want to call it "night") before departing the next morning for  Øye, which lies at the tip of a remote Fjord, the Norangsfjorden. Some locals told us that another nearby town, Urke, had less than...
1 comment
Read more

Edinburgh

We stayed in Edinburgh for two days to conclude our Scotland adventure. Hannah spent a semester in Edinburgh in her spritely college days and she remembers it fondly. As we wandered through the city, Hannah would point out various places and reminisce. Here was the restaurant where she would gather with friends to celebrate special occasions (The Outsider), here was the local café they frequented between classes (Peter's Yard), this was the park she walked through to get home (The Meadows), and there is the shitty hostel she stayed in when she arrived (less interesting!).  Edinburgh was fun. We liked it more than Glasgow. Edinburgh had more to see (more ancient castles, museums and monuments) and the city was denser and more lively. Glasgow just felt more utilitarian.  Hannah - of course - led me to the far-flung corners of the city in an effort to find the newest and best food, including marching me straight out of Edinburgh and into the neighboring city of Leith. We ate well...
Post a Comment
Read more